Icape Group Acquires UK’s Kingfisher PCBs

FONTENAY-AUX-ROSES, FRANCE – Icape Group has expanded its presence in the UK by acquiring Kingfisher PCBs.

The Prestwick-based PCB supplier brings more than 35 years of experience in aerospace, telecommunications, automotive, oil, and gas. The company said its acquisition strengthens Icape’s presence in the UK market and expands its distribution network.

“This latest operation completes the structuring of our Business Unit in the United Kingdom, one of the main European PCB distribution markets,” said Icape CEO Yann Duigou. “Kingfisher’s expertise and established customer relationships complement our existing capabilities and will allow us to provide even better services and support to our customers in the region. We are excited to welcome the Kingfisher team to the Icape family.”

PE Group, FormFactor Team to Acquire FICT

NAGANO, JAPAN – An Asian private equity firm is acquiring printed circuit board (PCB) fabricator FICT Ltd. in a deal valued at 100 billion yen ($656 million).

The deal is expected to close in the current quarter.

MBK Partners and Livermore, CA-based FormFactor Inc. will acquire FICT from Advantage Partners. Under the agreement, MBK will assume an 80% share of FICT, with FormFactor receiving a 20% stake for its $60 million investment.

Würth Elektronik Finalizes Schopfheim PCB Plant Closure

SCHOPFHEIM, SWITZERLAND – Würth Elektronik closed its PCB production site here in early February after first announcing the move in October. The fabricator will move production from Schopfheim to its three sites in Germany.

“The management and works council have now reached an agreement on a reconciliation of interests and a social plan, which was presented to the affected employees at a works meeting on February 6,” according to the company. “After the closure was announced, companies from the region and neighboring Switzerland contacted us with job offers for the employees in Schopfheim. Würth Elektronik used the contact for an internal job exchange. To date, almost all trainees and around 50 employees have been placed.”

“The production sites in Niedernhall and Rot-am-See will focus on industries and applications whose more complex and individual printed circuit boards are manufactured in Europe for strategic reasons,” said Wurth, which attributes the need to close Schopfheim to “the current worst crisis in the history of the PCB industry in Europe, with a dramatic slump in incoming orders.”

Vexos Expands Manufacturing Capacity in Vietnam, US

NEW YORK – Vexos in February announced expansions of its Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Vancouver, WA, facilities to meet increasing customer demand.

The company said these investments will enhance production efficiency, automation, and supply chain flexibility, helping it meet growing customer demand and navigate evolving geopolitical dynamics.

“Our expansion in Ho Chi Minh City and Vancouver, Washington, reflects our commitment to increasing capacity, leveraging advanced technology, and optimizing operations to better serve our customers,” said Paul Jona, CEO, Vexos. “By expanding strategically, we are enhancing agility, reducing lead times, and strengthening supply chain resilience.”

Flex Opens Power Facility in Dallas

DALLAS – Flex has expanded its US manufacturing operations with a new 400,000 sq. ft. facility here, aimed at enhancing its production capabilities for power infrastructure solutions.

The company said the facility will focus on the fabrication and assembly of power pods, power distribution units, and low-voltage switchgear, catering to the growing needs of North American customers.

“Our new Dallas facility positions us to deliver next-generation power infrastructure solutions that help customers maximize computing performance while reducing deployment times,” said Chris Butler, president of Embedded and Critical Power.

Keytronic Plans $28M Expansion in Arkansas

SPOKANE VALLEY, WA – Keytronic plans to build a $28 million manufacturing facility in Springdale, AR, and anticipates creating more than 400 jobs in the next five years.

The company said it will shift its existing Arkansas operations in Fayetteville to the new 300,000 sq. ft. facility in Springdale in late 2025, which will increase production capacity by approximately 40%.

“We are pleased to announce the expansion of our US manufacturing operations in Northwest Arkansas,” said CEO Brett Larsen. “Our new center of excellence in Springdale will provide both our employees and customers with cutting-edge technology and the increased capacity necessary to accommodate expected growth. We are committed to continuously investing in our capabilities and attracting innovative talent. Our people are our most valuable asset, and we are delighted to enhance our operations in a region where we have maintained a longstanding presence and a strong team and can benefit from a business-friendly environment.”

AIM Solder Acquires Solder Assembly Materials Firm Canfield Technologies

CRANSTON, RI – AIM Solder has acquired the assets of Canfield Technologies, a fellow producer of solder assembly materials. Financial and other terms were not disclosed.

Canfield’s production operations will be integrated into AIM’s facility in Mexico to optimize manufacturing processes and better serve the company’s global clientele.

In a statement, AIM called the deal a “strategic move aims to enhance AIM’s growth, efficiency, and excellence in the industrial sector. … Their commitment to superior customer service, innovative solutions, competitive pricing, and prompt delivery aligns seamlessly with AIM’s core values.”

ACT Group Acquires UK-Based Assembler Active-PCB

READING, UK – UK-based electronics manufacturer Active-PCB has announced its acquisition by Agile Circuit Technologies Group.

“Active-PCB was founded 28 years ago by Gary Turner and Marinela Covachã, with a relentless focus on providing highly responsive service to address customer’s underlying needs,” said Active-PCB CEO Mark Aitken. “ACT Group’s culture and strategy is a perfect fit with this founding ethos. We are excited about the prospects for our customers and ourselves in this new partnership.”

Active-PCB provides electronic and mechanical assembly solutions for everything from early design and prototyping to volume production. ACT Group offers PCB manufacturing and assembly services for various industries, including communications, industrial control, consumer electronics, medical, automobile and aerospace.

Electronics Industry Demand on Rise

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Orders, capacity utilization and backlogs all increased of late, pushing electronics industry demand higher according to IPC’s February Sentiment of the Global Electronics Manufacturing Supply Chain Report.

The results are based upon the findings of an IPC survey fielded between Jan. 16-31.

The Demand Index is at its highest level since May 2024. Profit margins remain under pressure, but the Profit Margin Index has risen for the second consecutive month. (more)

Controlled Impedance on High-Speed Flex PCBs

Front-end analysis can help estimate the proper hatch opening – if any – for a flex PCB.
by Zachariah Peterson

Flex PCB and rigid-flex PCB designers are aware of the typical lack of ground planes in a flex design. Due to this and the obvious requirement of ground planes in high-speed PCBs and RF PCBs, one may think that flex PCBs cannot support high-speed digital signals. However, even with a mesh or hatched ground plane, it is possible to design systems that include high-speed signals, both single-ended and differential.

Of course, there are limitations on using hatched ground planes to support high-speed digital signals. For differential interfaces, the hatch has the potential to induce skew, but the superposition of the electromagnetic field from differential signals helps ensure lower noise. In contrast, single-ended signals without a nearby solid reference have the potential for greater radiated emissions from a flex PCB with a hatched ground plane.

Here we discuss some of the limiting factors for both single-ended and differential signals used in flex PCBs and offer some simulation data that illustrates bandwidth limits. Some simple estimators can also be used to determine when a hatched plane is no longer capable of supporting digital signals due to its periodic deviation in input impedance.

The Via-in-Pad and Wrap Plating Process

How and why to achieve higher-density placement and routing.
by Roy Akber

PCB pin count and interconnect densities are increasing almost daily. Due to the associated high frequencies and speed, not only are impedance matching constraints challenging, but timing is also becoming more important. To add fuel to the fire, the size of the PCBs is getting smaller. Techniques are needed to create space and routing channels on these smaller PCBs. On one end, designers are under considerable pressure to create a design that can meet all the target functionalities. Conversely, PCB manufacturers are facing similar challenges in developing fabrication and assembly processes that can guarantee a reliable product with minimum tolerances.

Via-in-pad is a printed circuit board technology that permits SMT components to be placed with greater density and helps achieve higher interconnect density. In a typical PCB routing technique, escape traces are drawn from the component leads, and then escape vias are used to transition to the next routing layers. These escape traces and their vias require extra space. With via-in-pad technology, the via is inserted on the pad of the component, helping save space and achieve higher-density placement and routing.

This detailed document is intended to demonstrate via-in-pad from a manufacturing perspective.

Is the Industry Ready for a Solderless World?

The time is now for serial inventor Joe Fjelstad’s answer to simplifying component assembly.
by Dan Beaulieu

Joe Fjelstad is a renowned innovator, environmental advocate and the visionary mind behind the Occam Process, a groundbreaking advancement in electronics manufacturing. In this in-depth conversation, Fjelstad shares the journey of Occam, its transformative potential, and the wisdom gathered over his illustrious career.

Beaulieu: Joe, how did you first conceive the idea for the Occam Process? Was there a specific problem or challenge in the electronics industry that inspired it?

Fjelstad: The idea came on the heels of the lead-free movement which began in the mid to late 1990s. Like many others (and having had environmental leanings since before the first Earth Day in the early 1970s) I was in favor of the lead-free initiative, but some independent digging found it was not necessary based on what I and many others uncovered. Lead in electronics solder represented less than 0.5% of all lead used annually on a global basis.

The Benefits of Nitrogen in PCB Soldering

Introducing nitrogen to the solder process can enhance reliability and yields.
by Md Imtiaz Uddin

Inert gas soldering systems, which use a controlled nitrogen blanket atmosphere and an entry vacuum oxygen/nitrogen exchange chamber, offer several key benefits:

• Oxide formation. Indirectly through its presence, nitrogen minimizes the formation of oxides during soldering.¹
• Flux selection flexibility. Greater flexibility in choosing fluxes.
• Post-cleaning. Post-soldering cleaning requirements can be reduced or even eliminated.

In Case You Missed It

Defect Detection

“Multidimensional Computed Measurement for Highly Accurate PCBA Defect Detection”

Authors: Zefang Chen, et. al.

Abstract: Accurate defect detection in industrial automated optical inspection (AOI) directly affects product quality and production efficiency. Although numerous techniques have been developed for industrial defect detection, most of them rely on single-texture image data. This dependence limits the accuracy and robustness of the defect detection due to inadequate optical source information. To overcome the problem of low accuracy owing to the lack of 3-D topographic information, a multidimensional information fusion (MIF) module is proposed that fuses texture image and depth image features. The MIF module includes tailored mechanisms to fully extract complementary semantic information from space and channel dimensions. A hierarchical fusion strategy further improves feature integration by enabling higher-layer feature fusion via lower-layer transformer blocks and efficiently removing redundant features. Afterward, feature extraction is performed on the fused feature map, and output is obtained. To enhance the detection accuracy, the position information mask (PIM) module is introduced for post-processing. The PIM module uses surface mount devices (SMDs) position data from Gerber files to create a position information mask. The mask helps filter out defects that are often misidentified owing to missing design information. The results of the comparative experiments demonstrate that the average accuracy of the authors’ method on the printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) defect dataset is 99.93%, which is 5.64% higher than that of conventional YOLOV5. Further, a comprehensive ablation study is conducted to elucidate the contribution of the proposed MIF and PIM modules. It demonstrated that the present model serves as a valuable reference for PCBA surface defect detection. (Optics Express, February 2025, https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.551868)